Some Desperate Glory
by Emily Tesh · first published 2022
33% recommend67% neutral
While we live, the enemy shall fear us. All her life Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the murder of planet Earth. Raised in the bowels of Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she readies herself to face the Wisdom, the all-powerful, reality-shaping weapon that gave the Majoda their victory over humanity. They are what’s left. They are what must survive. Kyr is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet. But when Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to the nursery to bear sons until she dies trying, she knows s
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Highlights so far this year are: - Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesch -- really phenomenal pacing and psychological terror in a sci-fi action novel. - The Golem of Brooklyn by Adam Mansbach -- good portrait of different strains of American Judaism in a book…
on “Ask HN: What were the best books you read this year?” ↗Fiction (shortlist): -Some Desperate Glory (Emily Tesh) -A Memory called Empire (Arkady Martin) both of these are a fairly interesting take on scifi worldbuilding. Could be called "highbrow", but IMO pretty easy reads still. -Piranesi (S. Clark)…
on “Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?” ↗…look at other recent years: * 2020 - A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine - a science fiction story set in a future Aztec space empire - quite inventive and odd. The sequel won in 2022. * 2024 - Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh - basically a story about growing up as a terrorist in a sci-fi setting, with some wild turns. * 2025 - The Tainted Cup by Robert Bennett Jackson - a very bizarre Holmes & Watson take set…
on “Book Prizes Don't Work How You Think” ↗> Best Novel: Emily Tesh -- Some Desperate Glory (Tordotcom, Orbit UK) A thrillingly told queer space opera about the wreckage of war, the family you find, and who you must become when every choice is stripped from you > Best Novella: T. Kingfisher…
on “2024's Hugo Award Winners Announced” ↗…think this just shows it's possible to write boring summaries, and log lines are often very non-specific. I read almost all of the Hugo-nominated fiction, and wrote these summaries for my own blogging: SOME DESPERATE GLORY, by Emily Tesh, is set roughly twenty or so years after the Earth was destroyed by an antimatter bomb, deployed by a galactic civilization called the majoda. Now a small remnant of a few thousand humans…
on “2024's Hugo Award Winners Announced” ↗…- "The Crystal Shard" by R.A.Salvatore (I needed to see what Drizzt is all about) - "James" by Percival Everett (maybe my biggest disappointment of the year) - "Alien Clay" by Adrian Tchaikovsky - "Some Desperate Glory" by Emily Tesh - "Sea of Rust" by C. Robert Cargill
on “Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?” ↗